Bieber and Gosling are 11th cousins once removed; he and and Dion are 10th cousins three times removed; and he and Lavigne are 12th cousins.

“The great thing about family history is that you never know what you’re going to find,” Michelle Ercanback, a researcher with Ancentry.com, told the Associated Press. “It was a very pleasant surprise.”

All the connections date back to two French couples who moved to Quebec in the 1600s. Bieber, Gosling and Lavigne count Mathurin Roy and Marguerite Bire as common ancestors; Bieber and Dion are connected through another couple, Jacques Vezina and Marie Boisdon.

In more modern-day Bieber news, the singer, 18, was the victim of a “swatting” prank Tuesday night, TMZ.com reports, as a SWAT team descended on his home to investigate anonymous – and ultimately false – reports by a 911 caller of a gunman on the loose there.

The pop star also appears in a lengthy new anti-bullying PSA, in which he talks with a Long Island student about the topic.

The PSA was mandated by a court as part of a plea deal in a criminal case against Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, and one other executive stemming from a crowd-control problem at a Long Island mall in 2009.

Braun and James Roppo were accused of failing to cooperate with police and hindering police efforts to disperse a crowd at a scheduled Bieber appearance.